In May 1839 some five hundred insurrectionists led by Auguste Blanqui, in the revolutionary socialist tradition of Babeuf and Buonarotti, seized control of the Hфtel de Ville (City Hall) in Paris. Blanqui and his associates were subsequently forcefully overcome and the survivors were subjected to diverse punishments.
A number of German exiles living in the Paris area were involved in a socialist-idealist group known as the "League of the Just" that had had some links with Blanqui and this insurrection. Following the events of May 1839 some of the members of the "League of the Just" settled in London where they established a "German Workers Educational Society".
When Karl Marx was visiting the emerging industrial city of Manchester, and England, in 1845 he was introduced to the League of the Just by his friend Friedrich Engels.
In June 1847 the League expressed a willingness to amalgamate itself with a brussels based Communist Correspondence Committee. Marx would only endorse such an amalgamation however if the League of the Just became more avowedly Communist and adopted the name "Communist League".
Engels became centrally involved in the task of developing some sort of aspirational programme outline for the League. He seemed to make little headway for several months. He, and the League, wanted something that was both communist and motivating, and what he came up with originally seemed trite and dull.
In late November 1847 the second congress of the Communist League was convened, (in the upstairs rooms of a London pub), both Marx and Engels attended this congress which was intellectually dominated by Karl Marx.
As a result of Marx' intervention this second congress, in the early days of December, committed itself to a revolutionary programme that would involve the overthrow of the bougeoise and the establishment of a society without classes and without private property.
Marx and Engels were entrusted with the task of preparing an aspirational Manifesto that was in line with the decisions of the second congress.
Marx returned to his then home in Brussels but did not apply himself to the formulation of the Manifesto until threatened with disciplinary measures by the Central Committee of the Communist League in late January 1848.
The Central Committee gave Marx only a very few days to come up with the desired Communist Manifesto.
Marx was frequently known, in his journalism and other writing, to work into the night and, faced with the Central Committee's ultimatum, produced a draft Manifesto for submission to the Central Committee in London by the earlier days of February 1848.
The Manifesto appeared, in the German Language, as the Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei, set in a gothic font style, in late February 1848.
Within weeks a protracted spate of revolution broke out in Europe - it was not however related to the publication of the Communist Manifesto but, against a background of food scarcity and economic doldrums, was more attributable to the impatience of the French with their "liberal " monarch Louis Phillipe. France sneezed and Europe caught cold - 1848 was to be a year of revolutions and there was most widespread socio-political unrest over the ensuing eighteen or so months.
The first English translation of the Communist Manifesto, (by Helen MacFarlane), appeared in November 1850 in the "Red Republican" a limited circulation publication issued by the ex-Chartist George Julian Harney.
Some brief extracts from the Communist Manifesto appeared in the autumn of 1851, and accompanied by warnings and disclaimers, in the London Times.
Marxism caught hold in Germany and in France far moreso than in England. Whilst there were some translations published in the United States of America after 1851 the first enduring English language translation - that by Samuel Moore - appeared in 1888.
Engels gave his endorsement to this translation. (non illustrated)
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